[Radio Wrangler]

Radio gear, no, but I have had a couple of people fancy the camera I was holding. Still got it.

An Icom R9000 receiver (5 grand at the time) was stolen from the firm where I worked. Rob Mannion and the other magazine editors helped with a non-specific about where it was stolen from appeal for info with just the police phone number mentioned.

It was Icom UK's receiver on loan for evaluation. We'd just got a delivery of 3 for a development under way and wanted 140 more for the customer units. The loaner had let software development get started. We only noticed the loss when looking for it to ship it back to Thanet. Embarrassing!

The next thing, in the week of publication of PW, a radio amateur about 30 miles away phoned me asking for advice. He'd read of it in PW and wondered if I'd heard anything about it. It was in the hands of an old disabled chap who'd bought it to listen to aircraft with. £400 had been a lot for him. It didn't work and he'd asked for help. Being used for development of an automatic receiver system, the radio had been switched into remote control mode, so the front panel was disabled. The thief and his fence didn't understand so they went looking for some dodgy radio people, and it wound up in the hands of a bunch of illegal CBers. They took it apart to try and 'fix' it. Use your imagination about the results! They advertised it by word of mouth locally as not working, repairable. The old guy bought it, thinking a friend, the young-ish radio amateur ought to be able to fix it. He was not aware of its history.

As Icom UK's demonstrator box, this was the very radio which had appeared on all the covers of all the usual radio magazines and reviews inside them. Priced beyond what almost all readers could budget, a bit of a drool-inducer of an article. The radio world's equivalent of nicking a hypercar fresh off Top Gear.

The old guy and the amateur were unsure what to do. Did they just bury the thing and hope it never came to light? I suggested that so long as they were not involved in the theft, or knew at the time that it was stolen, phoning the police and going through the normal channels might be safest.

The police traced it back to the illegal CBers, who pointed at the fence, and he immediately ratted on the actual thief. This meant the thief goot charged, but the CBer and fence were treated as witnesses. I understand, but was left feeling that without the fence, there would be fewer crimes.

Our firm didn't want the old guy losing out for doing the honest thing, so he wound up with his cost covered and a thank you in the shape of a brand new, fully functional scanner of more comfortable proportions. We bought Icom UK an new R9000 to replace their demonstrator.

It turned out that the thief was a security guard employed by a contractor who was in the act of losing his job for not being on the premises when he should have.

It went to court, him pleading not guilty. The value of the item put the case in a higher level court up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. All the witnesses etc turned up, and only then did the plea change to guilty.

I'd been phoned at work quite above board by the defence lawyer and I explained that a more prominent radio could not have been stolen. Hobbyists all over the country would be aware of it. It was going to come to light eventually. He could look on the magazine stands in Waverley Station and read the appeal for info. He still had the client hang onto 'Not guilty' until he was sure all the witnesses had turned up.

David